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The Story of Stuff - Another Error Ridden Propaganda Piece
A friend emailed me through a link to 'The Story of Stuff' (TSOS) which after having the unfortunate tenacity to watch, and after I stopped retching, I decided to look into a couple of the 'facts' so blithely proclaimed in this anti-capitalistic, 'progressive' mockumentary.

Whilst I might be tempted to check all of the claims made in the film, I'll just start with a couple of early claims....

1) America spends over half of it's budget/tax on the military.

A quick look at wikipedia shows that this is obviously wrong. (Scroll down to 'How Congress Spends' diagram) Health and Human services spends more, and also increased more in the last year, so there isn't even a trend towards spending half the budget.

2) Around half of the top 100 budgets/sized organisations are companies (With TSOS so unbiasedly picturing the small government man polishing the shoes of the much larger company man)

CNN lists the top 500 companies and the CIA lists the GDP of every county. Whilst remembering that there are not that many countries (the 100th ranked country has a GDP of only 35 billion - so really this is just a propaganda claim anyways), a quick squiz at both charts show just how wrong TSOS is. The 66th top country has a GDP of 98 billion, and the 34th top company has a revenue of 97.5 billion. Making the split 66/34, not 51/49 as TSOS makes out.

And this is just the first two factual claims of a one-sided propaganda piece.

If you are looking for education, not indoctrination, ignore the story of stuff.

The budget did not include the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, and the cost of treating our broken soldiers is not yet fully factored in.

I think the people discussing wikipedia are generally correct that Wikipedia can be changed by anyone, but have to concede the treasury data would certainly be factual.

To avoid this, go direct to sources of government statistical data.

There is a concern for where our world is going, and even free marketeers like Posner, (one of the Milton Friedman "chicago school" promoters has now recanted about "Free markets" being the answer without regulation.